Sunday was as yet two days off; but meanwhile, to beguile his
impatience, Newman took his way to the Avenue de Messine and got what
comfort he could in staring at the blank outer wall of Madame de
Cintré’s present residence. The street in question, as some travelers
will remember, adjoins the Parc Monceau, which is one of the prettiest
corners of Paris. The quarter has an air of modern opulence and
convenience which seems at variance with the ascetic institution, and
the impression made upon Newman’s gloomily-irritated gaze by the
fresh-looking, windowless expanse behind which the woman he loved was
perhaps even then pledging herself to pass the rest of her days was
less exasperating than he had feared. The place suggested a convent
with the modern improvements—an asylum in which privacy, though
unbroken, might be not quite identical with privation, and meditation,
though monotonous, might be of a cheerful cast. And yet he knew the
case was otherwise; only at present it was not a reality to him. It was
too strange and too mocking to be real; it was like a page torn out of
a romance, with no context in his own experience.
On Sunday morning, at the hour which Mrs. Tristram had indicated, he
rang at the gate in the blank wall. It instantly opened and admitted
him into a clean, cold-looking court, from beyond which a dull, plain
edifice looked down upon him. A robust lay sister with a cheerful
complexion emerged from a porter’s lodge, and, on his stating his
errand, pointed to the open door of the chapel, an edifice which
occupied the right side of the court and was preceded by the high
flight of steps. Newman ascended the steps and immediately entered the
open door. Service had not yet begun; the place was dimly lighted, and
it was some moments before he could distinguish its features. Then he
saw it was divided by a large close iron screen into two unequal
portions. The altar was on the hither side of the screen, and between
it and the entrance were disposed several benches and chairs. Three or
four of these were occupied by vague, motionless figures—figures that
he presently perceived to be women, deeply absorbed in their devotion.
The place seemed to Newman very cold; the smell of the incense itself
was cold. Besides this there was a twinkle of tapers and here and there
a glow of colored glass. Newman seated himself; the praying women kept
still, with their backs turned. He saw they were visitors like himself
and he would have liked to see their faces; for he believed that they
were the mourning mothers and sisters of other women who had had the
same pitiless courage as Madame de Cintré. But they were better off
than he, for they at least shared the faith to which the others had
sacrificed themselves. Three or four persons came in; two of them were
elderly gentlemen. Everyone was very quiet. Newman fastened his eyes
upon the screen behind the altar. That was the convent, the real
convent, the place where she was. But he could see nothing; no light
came through the crevices. He got up and approached the partition very
gently, trying to look through. But behind it there was darkness, with
nothing stirring. He went back to his place, and after that a priest
and two altar boys came in and began to say mass.
Newman watched their genuflections and gyrations with a grim, still
enmity; they seemed aids and abettors of Madame de Cintré’s desertion;
they were mouthing and droning out their triumph. The priest’s long,
dismal intonings acted upon his nerves and deepened his wrath; there
was something defiant in his unintelligible drawl; it seemed meant for
Newman himself. Suddenly there arose from the depths of the chapel,
from behind the inexorable grating, a sound which drew his attention
from the altar—the sound of a strange, lugubrious chant, uttered by
women’s voices. It began softly, but it presently grew louder, and as
it increased it became more of a wail and a dirge. It was the chant of
the Carmelite nuns, their only human utterance. It was their dirge over
their buried affections and over the vanity of earthly desires. At
first Newman was bewildered—almost stunned—by the strangeness of the
sound; then, as he comprehended its meaning, he listened intently and
his heart began to throb. He listened for Madame de Cintré’s voice, and
in the very heart of the tuneless harmony he imagined he made it out.
(We are obliged to believe that he was wrong, inasmuch as she had
obviously not yet had time to become a member of the invisible
sisterhood.) The chant kept on, mechanical and monotonous, with dismal
repetitions and despairing cadences. It was hideous, it was horrible;
as it continued, Newman felt that he needed all his self-control. He
was growing more agitated; he felt tears in his eyes. At last, as in
its full force the thought came over him that this confused, impersonal
wail was all that either he or the world she had deserted should ever
hear of the voice he had found so sweet, he felt that he could bear it
no longer. He rose abruptly and made his way out. On the threshold he
paused, listened again to the dreary strain, and then hastily descended
into the court. As he did so he saw the good sister with the
high-colored cheeks and the fanlike frill to her coiffure, who had
admitted him, was in conference at the gate with two persons who had
just come in. A second glance informed him that these persons were
Madame de Bellegarde and her son, and that they were about to avail
themselves of that method of approach to Madame de Cintré which Newman
had found but a mockery of consolation. As he crossed the court M. de
Bellegarde recognized him; the marquis was coming to the steps, leading
his mother. The old lady also gave Newman a look, and it resembled that
of her son. Both faces expressed a franker perturbation, something more
akin to the humbleness of dismay, than Newman had yet seen in them.
Evidently he startled the Bellegardes, and they had not their grand
behavior immediately in hand. Newman hurried past them, guided only by
the desire to get out of the convent walls and into the street. The
gate opened itself at his approach; he strode over the threshold and it
closed behind him. A carriage which appeared to have been standing
there, was just turning away from the sidewalk. Newman looked at it for
a moment, blankly; then he became conscious, through the dusky mist
that swam before his eyes, that a lady seated in it was bowing to him.
The vehicle had turned away before he recognized her; it was an ancient
landau with one half the cover lowered. The lady’s bow was very
positive and accompanied with a smile; a little girl was seated beside
her. He raised his hat, and then the lady bade the coachman stop. The
carriage halted again beside the pavement, and she sat there and
beckoned to Newman—beckoned with the demonstrative grace of Madame
Urbain de Bellegarde. Newman hesitated a moment before he obeyed her
summons, during this moment he had time to curse his stupidity for
letting the others escape him. He had been wondering how he could get
at them; fool that he was for not stopping them then and there! What
better place than beneath the very prison walls to which they had
consigned the promise of his joy? He had been too bewildered to stop
them, but now he felt ready to wait for them at the gate. Madame
Urbain, with a certain attractive petulance, beckoned to him again, and
this time he went over to the carriage. She leaned out and gave him her
hand, looking at him kindly, and smiling.
“Ah, monsieur,” she said, “you don’t include me in your wrath? I had
nothing to do with it.”
“Oh, I don’t suppose _you_ could have prevented it!” Newman answered in
a tone which was not that of studied gallantry.
“What you say is too true for me to resent the small account it makes
of my influence. I forgive you, at any rate, because you look as if you
had seen a ghost.”
“I have!” said Newman.
“I am glad, then, I didn’t go in with Madame de Bellegarde and my
husband. You must have seen them, eh? Was the meeting affectionate? Did
you hear the chanting? They say it’s like the lamentations of the
damned. I wouldn’t go in: one is certain to hear that soon enough. Poor
Claire—in a white shroud and a big brown cloak! That’s the _toilette_
of the Carmelites, you know. Well, she was always fond of long, loose
things. But I must not speak of her to you; only I must say that I am
very sorry for you, that if I could have helped you I would, and that I
think everyone has been very shabby. I was afraid of it, you know; I
felt it in the air for a fortnight before it came. When I saw you at my
mother-in-law’s ball, taking it all so easily, I felt as if you were
dancing on your grave. But what could I do? I wish you all the good I
can think of. You will say that isn’t much! Yes; they have been very
shabby; I am not a bit afraid to say it; I assure you everyone thinks
so. We are not all like that. I am sorry I am not going to see you
again; you know I think you very good company. I would prove it by
asking you to get into the carriage and drive with me for a quarter of
an hour, while I wait for my mother-in-law. Only if we were
seen—considering what has passed, and everyone knows you have been
turned away—it might be thought I was going a little too far, even for
me. But I shall see you sometimes—somewhere, eh? You know”—this was
said in English—“we have a plan for a little amusement.”
Newman stood there with his hand on the carriage-door listening to this
consolatory murmur with an unlighted eye. He hardly knew what Madame de
Bellegarde was saying; he was only conscious that she was chattering
ineffectively. But suddenly it occurred to him that, with her pretty
professions, there was a way of making her effective; she might help
him to get at the old woman and the marquis. “They are coming back
soon—your companions?” he said. “You are waiting for them?”
“They will hear the mass out; there is nothing to keep them longer.
Claire has refused to see them.”
“I want to speak to them,” said Newman; “and you can help me, you can
do me a favor. Delay your return for five minutes and give me a chance
at them. I will wait for them here.”
Madame de Bellegarde clasped her hands with a tender grimace. “My poor
friend, what do you want to do to them? To beg them to come back to
you? It will be wasted words. They will never come back!”
“I want to speak to them, all the same. Pray do what I ask you. Stay
away and leave them to me for five minutes; you needn’t be afraid; I
shall not be violent; I am very quiet.”
“Yes, you look very quiet! If they had _le cœur tendre_ you would move
them. But they haven’t! However, I will do better for you than what you
propose. The understanding is not that I shall come back for them. I am
going into the Parc Monceau with my little girl to give her a walk, and
my mother-in-law, who comes so rarely into this quarter, is to profit
by the same opportunity to take the air. We are to wait for her in the
park, where my husband is to bring her to us. Follow me now; just
within the gates I shall get out of my carriage. Sit down on a chair in
some quiet corner and I will bring them near you. There’s devotion for
you! _Le reste vous regarde_.”
This proposal seemed to Newman extremely felicitous; it revived his
drooping spirit, and he reflected that Madame Urbain was not such a
goose as she seemed. He promised immediately to overtake her, and the
carriage drove away.
The Parc Monceau is a very pretty piece of landscape-gardening, but
Newman, passing into it, bestowed little attention upon its elegant
vegetation, which was full of the freshness of spring. He found Madame
de Bellegarde promptly, seated in one of the quiet corners of which she
had spoken, while before her, in the alley, her little girl, attended
by the footman and the lap-dog, walked up and down as if she were
taking a lesson in deportment. Newman sat down beside the mamma, and
she talked a great deal, apparently with the design of convincing him
that—if he would only see it—poor dear Claire did not belong to the
most fascinating type of woman. She was too tall and thin, too stiff
and cold; her mouth was too wide and her nose too narrow. She had no
dimples anywhere. And then she was eccentric, eccentric in cold blood;
she was an Anglaise, after all. Newman was very impatient; he was
counting the minutes until his victims should reappear. He sat silent,
leaning upon his cane, looking absently and insensibly at the little
marquise. At length Madame de Bellegarde said she would walk toward the
gate of the park and meet her companions; but before she went she
dropped her eyes, and, after playing a moment with the lace of her
sleeve, looked up again at Newman.
“Do you remember,” she asked, “the promise you made me three weeks
ago?” And then, as Newman, vainly consulting his memory, was obliged to
confess that the promise had escaped it, she declared that he had made
her, at the time, a very queer answer—an answer at which, viewing it in
the light of the sequel, she had fair ground for taking offense. “You
promised to take me to Bullier’s after your marriage. After your
marriage—you made a great point of that. Three days after that your
marriage was broken off. Do you know, when I heard the news, the first
thing I said to myself? ‘Oh heaven, now he won’t go with me to
Bullier’s!’ And I really began to wonder if you had not been expecting
the rupture.”
“Oh, my dear lady,” murmured Newman, looking down the path to see if
the others were not coming.
“I shall be good-natured,” said Madame de Bellegarde. “One must not ask
too much of a gentleman who is in love with a cloistered nun. Besides,
I can’t go to Bullier’s while we are in mourning. But I haven’t given
it up for that. The _partie_ is arranged; I have my cavalier. Lord
Deepmere, if you please! He has gone back to his dear Dublin; but a few
months hence I am to name any evening and he will come over from
Ireland, on purpose. That’s what I call gallantry!”
Shortly after this Madame de Bellegarde walked away with her little
girl. Newman sat in his place; the time seemed terribly long. He felt
how fiercely his quarter of an hour in the convent chapel had raked
over the glowing coals of his resentment. Madame de Bellegarde kept him
waiting, but she proved as good as her word. At last she reappeared at
the end of the path, with her little girl and her footman; beside her
slowly walked her husband, with his mother on his arm. They were a long
time advancing, during which Newman sat unmoved. Tingling as he was
with passion, it was extremely characteristic of him that he was able
to moderate his expression of it, as he would have turned down a
flaring gas-burner. His native coolness, shrewdness, and
deliberateness, his life-long submissiveness to the sentiment that
words were acts and acts were steps in life, and that in this matter of
taking steps curveting and prancing were exclusively reserved for
quadrupeds and foreigners—all this admonished him that rightful wrath
had no connection with being a fool and indulging in spectacular
violence. So as he rose, when old Madame de Bellegarde and her son were
close to him, he only felt very tall and light. He had been sitting
beside some shrubbery, in such a way as not to be noticeable at a
distance; but M. de Bellegarde had evidently already perceived him. His
mother and he were holding their course, but Newman stepped in front of
them, and they were obliged to pause. He lifted his hat slightly, and
looked at them for a moment; they were pale with amazement and disgust.
“Excuse me for stopping you,” he said in a low tone, “but I must profit
by the occasion. I have ten words to say to you. Will you listen to
them?”
The marquis glared at him and then turned to his mother. “Can Mr.
Newman possibly have anything to say that is worth our listening to?”
“I assure you I have something,” said Newman, “besides, it is my duty
to say it. It’s a notification—a warning.”
“Your duty?” said old Madame de Bellegarde, her thin lips curving like
scorched paper. “That is your affair, not ours.”
Madame Urbain meanwhile had seized her little girl by the hand, with a
gesture of surprise and impatience which struck Newman, intent as he
was upon his own words, with its dramatic effectiveness. “If Mr. Newman
is going to make a scene in public,” she exclaimed, “I will take my
poor child out of the _mêlée_. She is too young to see such
naughtiness!” and she instantly resumed her walk.
“You had much better listen to me,” Newman went on. “Whether you do or
not, things will be disagreeable for you; but at any rate you will be
prepared.”
“We have already heard something of your threats,” said the marquis,
“and you know what we think of them.”
“You think a good deal more than you admit. A moment,” Newman added in
reply to an exclamation of the old lady. “I remember perfectly that we
are in a public place, and you see I am very quiet. I am not going to
tell your secret to the passers-by; I shall keep it, to begin with, for
certain picked listeners. Anyone who observes us will think that we are
having a friendly chat, and that I am complimenting you, madam, on your
venerable virtues.”
The marquis gave three short sharp raps on the ground with his stick.
“I demand of you to step out of our path!” he hissed.
Newman instantly complied, and M. de Bellegarde stepped forward with
his mother. Then Newman said, “Half an hour hence Madame de Bellegarde
will regret that she didn’t learn exactly what I mean.”
The marquise had taken a few steps, but at these words she paused,
looking at Newman with eyes like two scintillating globules of ice.
“You are like a peddler with something to sell,” she said, with a
little cold laugh which only partially concealed the tremor in her
voice.
“Oh, no, not to sell,” Newman rejoined; “I give it to you for nothing.”
And he approached nearer to her, looking her straight in the eyes. “You
killed your husband,” he said, almost in a whisper. “That is, you tried
once and failed, and then, without trying, you succeeded.”
Madame de Bellegarde closed her eyes and gave a little cough, which, as
a piece of dissimulation, struck Newman as really heroic. “Dear
mother,” said the marquis, “does this stuff amuse you so much?”
“The rest is more amusing,” said Newman. “You had better not lose it.”
Madame de Bellegarde opened her eyes; the scintillations had gone out
of them; they were fixed and dead. But she smiled superbly with her
narrow little lips, and repeated Newman’s word. “Amusing? Have I killed
someone else?”
“I don’t count your daughter,” said Newman, “though I might! Your
husband knew what you were doing. I have a proof of it whose existence
you have never suspected.” And he turned to the marquis, who was
terribly white—whiter than Newman had ever seen anyone out of a
picture. “A paper written by the hand, and signed with the name, of
Henri-Urbain de Bellegarde. Written after you, madam, had left him for
dead, and while you, sir, had gone—not very fast—for the doctor.”
The marquis looked at his mother; she turned away, looking vaguely
round her. “I must sit down,” she said in a low tone, going toward the
bench on which Newman had been sitting.
“Couldn’t you have spoken to me alone?” said the marquis to Newman,
with a strange look.
“Well, yes, if I could have been sure of speaking to your mother alone,
too,” Newman answered. “But I have had to take you as I could get you.”
Madame de Bellegarde, with a movement very eloquent of what he would
have called her “grit,” her steel-cold pluck and her instinctive appeal
to her own personal resources, drew her hand out of her son’s arm and
went and seated herself upon the bench. There she remained, with her
hands folded in her lap, looking straight at Newman. The expression of
her face was such that he fancied at first that she was smiling; but he
went and stood in front of her and saw that her elegant features were
distorted by agitation. He saw, however, equally, that she was
resisting her agitation with all the rigor of her inflexible will, and
there was nothing like either fear or submission in her stony stare.
She had been startled, but she was not terrified. Newman had an
exasperating feeling that she would get the better of him still; he
would not have believed it possible that he could so utterly fail to be
touched by the sight of a woman (criminal or other) in so tight a
place. Madame de Bellegarde gave a glance at her son which seemed
tantamount to an injunction to be silent and leave her to her own
devices. The marquis stood beside her, with his hands behind him,
looking at Newman.
“What paper is this you speak of?” asked the old lady, with an
imitation of tranquillity which would have been applauded in a veteran
actress.
“Exactly what I have told you,” said Newman. “A paper written by your
husband after you had left him for dead, and during the couple of hours
before you returned. You see he had the time; you shouldn’t have stayed
away so long. It declares distinctly his wife’s murderous intent.”
“I should like to see it,” Madame de Bellegarde observed.
“I thought you might,” said Newman, “and I have taken a copy.” And he
drew from his waistcoat pocket a small, folded sheet.
“Give it to my son,” said Madame de Bellegarde. Newman handed it to the
marquis, whose mother, glancing at him, said simply, “Look at it.” M.
de Bellegarde’s eyes had a pale eagerness which it was useless for him
to try to dissimulate; he took the paper in his light-gloved fingers
and opened it. There was a silence, during which he read it. He had
more than time to read it, but still he said nothing; he stood staring
at it. “Where is the original?” asked Madame de Bellegarde, in a voice
which was really a consummate negation of impatience.
“In a very safe place. Of course I can’t show you that,” said Newman.
“You might want to take hold of it,” he added with conscious
quaintness. “But that’s a very correct copy—except, of course, the
handwriting. I am keeping the original to show someone else.”
M. de Bellegarde at last looked up, and his eyes were still very eager.
“To whom do you mean to show it?”
“Well, I’m thinking of beginning with the duchess,” said Newman; “that
stout lady I saw at your ball. She asked me to come and see her, you
know. I thought at the moment I shouldn’t have much to say to her; but
my little document will give us something to talk about.”
“You had better keep it, my son,” said Madame de Bellegarde.
“By all means,” said Newman; “keep it and show it to your mother when
you get home.”
“And after showing it to the duchess?”—asked the marquis, folding the
paper and putting it away.
“Well, I’ll take up the dukes,” said Newman. “Then the counts and the
barons—all the people you had the cruelty to introduce me to in a
character of which you meant immediately to deprive me. I have made out
a list.”
For a moment neither Madame de Bellegarde nor her son said a word; the
old lady sat with her eyes upon the ground; M. de Bellegarde’s blanched
pupils were fixed upon her face. Then, looking at Newman, “Is that all
you have to say?” she asked.
“No, I want to say a few words more. I want to say that I hope you
quite understand what I’m about. This is my revenge, you know. You have
treated me before the world—convened for the express purpose—as if I
were not good enough for you. I mean to show the world that, however
bad I may be, you are not quite the people to say it.”
Madame de Bellegarde was silent again, and then she broke her silence.
Her self-possession continued to be extraordinary. “I needn’t ask you
who has been your accomplice. Mrs. Bread told me that you had purchased
her services.”
“Don’t accuse Mrs. Bread of venality,” said Newman. “She has kept your
secret all these years. She has given you a long respite. It was
beneath her eyes your husband wrote that paper; he put it into her
hands with a solemn injunction that she was to make it public. She was
too good-hearted to make use of it.”
The old lady appeared for an instant to hesitate, and then, “She was my
husband’s mistress,” she said, softly. This was the only concession to
self-defense that she condescended to make.
“I doubt that,” said Newman.
Madame de Bellegarde got up from her bench. “It was not to your
opinions I undertook to listen, and if you have nothing left but them
to tell me I think this remarkable interview may terminate.” And
turning to the marquis she took his arm again. “My son,” she said, “say
something!”
M. de Bellegarde looked down at his mother, passing his hand over his
forehead, and then, tenderly, caressingly, “What shall I say?” he
asked.
“There is only one thing to say,” said the Marquise. “That it was
really not worth while to have interrupted our walk.”
But the marquis thought he could improve this. “Your paper’s a
forgery,” he said to Newman.
Newman shook his head a little, with a tranquil smile. “M. de
Bellegarde,” he said, “your mother does better. She has done better all
along, from the first of my knowing you. You’re a mighty plucky woman,
madam,” he continued. “It’s a great pity you have made me your enemy. I
should have been one of your greatest admirers.”
“_Mon pauvre ami_,” said Madame de Bellegarde to her son in French, and
as if she had not heard these words, “you must take me immediately to
my carriage.”
Newman stepped back and let them leave him; he watched them a moment
and saw Madame Urbain, with her little girl, come out of a by-path to
meet them. The old lady stooped and kissed her grandchild. “Damn it,
she _is_ plucky!” said Newman, and he walked home with a slight sense
of being balked. She was so inexpressively defiant! But on reflection
he decided that what he had witnessed was no real sense of security,
still less a real innocence. It was only a very superior style of
brazen assurance. “Wait till she reads the paper!” he said to himself;
and he concluded that he should hear from her soon.
He heard sooner than he expected. The next morning, before midday, when
he was about to give orders for his breakfast to be served, M. de
Bellegarde’s card was brought to him. “She has read the paper and she
has passed a bad night,” said Newman. He instantly admitted his
visitor, who came in with the air of the ambassador of a great power
meeting the delegate of a barbarous tribe whom an absurd accident had
enabled for the moment to be abominably annoying. The ambassador, at
all events, had passed a bad night, and his faultlessly careful toilet
only threw into relief the frigid rancor in his eyes and the mottled
tones of his refined complexion. He stood before Newman a moment,
breathing quickly and softly, and shaking his forefinger curtly as his
host pointed to a chair.
“What I have come to say is soon said,” he declared “and can only be
said without ceremony.”
“I am good for as much or for as little as you desire,” said Newman.
The marquis looked round the room a moment, and then, “On what terms
will you part with your scrap of paper?”
“On none!” And while Newman, with his head on one side and his hands
behind him sounded the marquis’s turbid gaze with his own, he added,
“Certainly, that is not worth sitting down about.”
M. de Bellegarde meditated a moment, as if he had not heard Newman’s
refusal. “My mother and I, last evening,” he said, “talked over your
story. You will be surprised to learn that we think your little
document is—a”—and he held back his word a moment—“is genuine.”
“You forget that with you I am used to surprises!” exclaimed Newman,
with a laugh.
“The very smallest amount of respect that we owe to my father’s
memory,” the marquis continued, “makes us desire that he should not be
held up to the world as the author of so—so infernal an attack upon the
reputation of a wife whose only fault was that she had been submissive
to accumulated injury.”
“Oh, I see,” said Newman. “It’s for your father’s sake.” And he laughed
the laugh in which he indulged when he was most amused—a noiseless
laugh, with his lips closed.
But M. de Bellegarde’s gravity held good. “There are a few of my
father’s particular friends for whom the knowledge of so—so unfortunate
an—inspiration—would be a real grief. Even say we firmly established by
medical evidence the presumption of a mind disordered by fever, _il en
resterait quelque chose_. At the best it would look ill in him. Very
ill!”
“Don’t try medical evidence,” said Newman. “Don’t touch the doctors and
they won’t touch you. I don’t mind your knowing that I have not written
to them.”
Newman fancied that he saw signs in M. de Bellegarde’s discolored mask
that this information was extremely pertinent. But it may have been
merely fancy; for the marquis remained majestically argumentative. “For
instance, Madame d’Outreville,” he said, “of whom you spoke yesterday.
I can imagine nothing that would shock her more.”
“Oh, I am quite prepared to shock Madame d’Outreville, you know. That’s
on the cards. I expect to shock a great many people.”
M. de Bellegarde examined for a moment the stitching on the back of one
of his gloves. Then, without looking up, “We don’t offer you money,” he
said. “That we supposed to be useless.”
Newman, turning away, took a few turns about the room and then came
back. “What _do_ you offer me? By what I can make out, the generosity
is all to be on my side.”
The marquis dropped his arms at his side and held his head a little
higher. “What we offer you is a chance—a chance that a gentleman should
appreciate. A chance to abstain from inflicting a terrible blot upon
the memory of a man who certainly had his faults, but who, personally,
had done you no wrong.”
“There are two things to say to that,” said Newman. “The first is, as
regards appreciating your ‘chance,’ that you don’t consider me a
gentleman. That’s your great point you know. It’s a poor rule that
won’t work both ways. The second is that—well, in a word, you are
talking great nonsense!”
Newman, who in the midst of his bitterness had, as I have said, kept
well before his eyes a certain ideal of saying nothing rude, was
immediately somewhat regretfully conscious of the sharpness of these
words. But he speedily observed that the marquis took them more quietly
than might have been expected. M. de Bellegarde, like the stately
ambassador that he was, continued the policy of ignoring what was
disagreeable in his adversary’s replies. He gazed at the gilded
arabesques on the opposite wall, and then presently transferred his
glance to Newman, as if he too were a large grotesque in a rather
vulgar system of chamber-decoration. “I suppose you know that as
regards yourself it won’t do at all.”
“How do you mean it won’t do?”
“Why, of course you damn yourself. But I suppose that’s in your
programme. You propose to throw mud at us; you believe, you hope, that
some of it may stick. We know, of course, it can’t,” explained the
marquis in a tone of conscious lucidity; “but you take the chance, and
are willing at any rate to show that you yourself have dirty hands.”
“That’s a good comparison; at least half of it is,” said Newman. “I
take the chance of something sticking. But as regards my hands, they
are clean. I have taken the matter up with my finger-tips.”
M. de Bellegarde looked a moment into his hat. “All our friends are
quite with us,” he said. “They would have done exactly as we have
done.”
“I shall believe that when I hear them say it. Meanwhile I shall think
better of human nature.”
The marquis looked into his hat again. “Madame de Cintré was extremely
fond of her father. If she knew of the existence of the few written
words of which you propose to make this scandalous use, she would
demand of you proudly for his sake to give it up to her, and she would
destroy it without reading it.”
“Very possibly,” Newman rejoined. “But she will not know. I was in that
convent yesterday and I know what _she_ is doing. Lord deliver us! You
can guess whether it made me feel forgiving!”
M. de Bellegarde appeared to have nothing more to suggest; but he
continued to stand there, rigid and elegant, as a man who believed that
his mere personal presence had an argumentative value. Newman watched
him, and, without yielding an inch on the main issue, felt an
incongruously good-natured impulse to help him to retreat in good
order.
“Your visit’s a failure, you see,” he said. “You offer too little.”
“Propose something yourself,” said the marquis.
“Give me back Madame de Cintré in the same state in which you took her
from me.”
M. de Bellegarde threw back his head and his pale face flushed.
“Never!” he said.
“You can’t!”
“We wouldn’t if we could! In the sentiment which led us to deprecate
her marriage nothing is changed.”
“‘Deprecate’ is good!” cried Newman. “It was hardly worth while to come
here only to tell me that you are not ashamed of yourselves. I could
have guessed that!”
The marquis slowly walked toward the door, and Newman, following,
opened it for him. “What you propose to do will be very disagreeable,”
M. de Bellegarde said. “That is very evident. But it will be nothing
more.”
“As I understand it,” Newman answered, “that will be quite enough!”
M. de Bellegarde stood for a moment looking on the ground, as if he
were ransacking his ingenuity to see what else he could do to save his
father’s reputation. Then, with a little cold sigh, he seemed to
signify that he regretfully surrendered the late marquis to the penalty
of his turpitude. He gave a hardly perceptible shrug, took his neat
umbrella from the servant in the vestibule, and, with his gentlemanly
walk, passed out. Newman stood listening till he heard the door close;
then he slowly exclaimed, “Well, I ought to begin to be satisfied now!”